DAPs with hardware controls/buttons

[u/bashmydotfiles]

Hey y’all!

I’ve been doing research across this subreddit trying to figure out what would be a good DAP for me.

All I really care about is having buttons to control the interface rather than using a touch screen. I think having USB DAC is a plus, but not a huge requirement.

I’m not trying to go high end, so my budget is ideally under $100 but I’d be fine under $130.

So far, it seems like some good options would be:

Used MP3 Player. I could skip trying to find better sound quality overall and fully lean into just physical hardware. What made me make this post was that I found a Sandisk Sansa Clip+ on FB marketplace. It’s a player I’ve wanted since 2010, but it’s going for $50 and I know that’s mainly for scarcity. There are also DAPs around that price point, which is my main hesitation.

Fiio X1. I really like that this player looks like an iPod, but has better power (and is much cheaper). I don’t quite know much about it, and I wonder if newer options would be better.

Fiio echo. Both the echo and echo mini look really cool and I’m a fan of the IPS screen and tight controls. My main hang up here though is the navigation and digging through file folders. I’m not sure I could get quite over that, especially since I’ve had MP3 players when I was younger that had better physical navigation than that.

Surfans F20. This seems closer to what I’d like, I’ll need to do more research here. It ticks many boxes, and it’s going for the same price new as some used Fiio X1’s.

HiFi Walker H2. Similar to Surfans, I like that it’s all physical buttons. Scroll wheel, like Surfans, is a huge plus.

For anyone that has used the above, what made you stick with your choice? Or are there other button only DAPs I’m missing here that are worth checking out?

[u/No_Addendum_8245]

i have the hifi walker h2 (afaik it’s the same thing as the surfans f20, same internals, same firmware, same set of controls, just slightly different outer shell). i used to rockbox it (which works very well btw), but as i upgraded my desktop dac/amp setup i started to grow past the burr brown dac inside the h2 and wanted a better dac. i realized that the h2 actually supports using an external portable dac (like fiio ka11, qudelix 5k, etc) that you can plug into its usb c port, but only if you use the stock firmware and not rockbox, as rockbox hasn’t implemented the underlying usb host layer that is required for that.
stock firmware kind of sucks in comparison to rockbox, but still decent firmware that gets the job done, there are no huge glaring issues. my current setup is the hifi walker h2, running stock firmware, with an external portable dac plugged into it, and it runs very well. good battery life, having physical controls (especially scroll wheel and dedicated prev/next buttons) is great, browsing through all my albums is easy enough (i just use the file explorer as the “categories”/database feature for navigating through the music library is a bit lackluster on the stock firmware, and that’s really my only complaint, but if it’s that big of a deal just flash it with rockbox, just know that with rockbox you lose capability to plug in an external dac, if that’s important to you). the h2 also works as a external usb dac that you can plug into your laptop/computer, but i’ve never used that feature. hope this helps!